CORAZON Aquino of the Philippines, who was swept into office on a wave of ‘‘people power’’ in 1986 and then faced down half a dozen coup attempts in six years as president, died on Saturday in Manila. She was 76.

Her son, Senator Benigno Aquino, known as Noynoy, said she died at 3.18 am.

Demure but radiant in her familiar yellow dress, Aquino brought hope to the Philippines as a presidential candidate, then led its difficult transition to democracy from 20 years of autocratic rule under her predecessor, Ferdinand Marcos.

That initial triumph of popular will was a high point in modern Philippines history, and it offered a model for non-violent uprisings that has been repeated often in other countries.

But it also set a difficult precedent in the Philippines, where people nostalgic for their shining moment continue to see mass movements as an acceptable, if unconstitutional, answer to the difficulties of a flawed democratic system.

Since Aquino left office in 1992, the Philippines has had two electoral transfers of presidential power and two attempts at replicating ‘‘people power,’’ including one that succeeded in removing a democratically elected president, Joseph Estrada, in 2001.

Aquino spent the decades after her presidency as the fading conscience of her country, supporting social causes and, in her last years, joining street protests calling for the resignation of the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

An observant Roman Catholic who sometimes retreated to convents for contemplation, she attributed much of her success to a divine will. She also said she sought guidance from the spirit of her late husband, Benigno S. Aquino jnr, who had been a chief challenger to Marcos.

His assassination in 1983 fuelled the opposition against Marcos and made his widow a popular figure.

‘‘What on earth do I know about being president?’’ Aquino said in an interview in December 1985, after a rally opening her election campaign. But that was beside the point. For many Filipinos, she embodied a hope of becoming a better nation and a prouder people.

‘‘The only thing I can really offer the Filipino people is my sincerity,’’ she said in the interview.

It was what they hungered for, and what she delivered as president. Although often criticised as an indecisive and ineffectual leader, Aquino combined passivity and stubbornness and an unexpected shrewdness to hold firm against powerful opponents from both the right and the left.

Her survival in office was one of her chief accomplishments. She was succeeded by Fidel V. Ramos, whose challenge to Marcos was a catalyst for the uprising in 1986 and whose support as Aquino’s military chief was crucial to her in quelling coup attempts.

In the months after she took office, while ambitious people who had wilted under Marcos’ dominance jockeyed for power, Aquino succeeded in restoring a freely elected parliament and an independent judiciary.

She had come to power through what amounted to popular acclaim expressed by huge crowds that gathered in support of her after the disputed election in February 1986.

One year later, in February 1987, an 80 per cent popular vote for a new constitution was seen as a vote of confidence in her presidency, and coming after her non-electoral ascent to power, it helped keep her challengers at bay.

But these challenges, including the attempted coups and continuing agitation from pressure groups, limited her options.

Lacking political experience, she held back from making the most of her overwhelming mandate.

Born into one of the country’s wealthy land-owning families, the Cojuangcos of Tarlac, Aquino did not lead the social revolution that some had hoped for. She failed to institute effective land reform or to address the country’s fundamental structural ailment, the oligarchic control of power and politics.

Although the economy revived under her leadership, it remains weak, sustained by the remittances of millions of overseas workers. Economic growth is also hampered by an exploding population in a largely Roman Catholic nation in which artificial birth control is rejected by the church.

Maria Corazon Aquino, popularly known as Cory, was born in January 25, 1933, in Tarlac province in central Luzon, the sixth of eight children of Jose Cojuangco.

Like her future husband, she was the offspring of a wealthy and politically powerful family. The Cojuangcos’ banking and commercial interests, along with their 6000 hectare sugar plantation, made them one of the wealthiest families in the province.

Like the Aquinos, they belonged to the class of oligarchs of Chinese, Spanish and Malay descent who have held the real power in the Philippines since colonial days.

She attended exclusive schools in Manila until she was 13, when she was sent to finish her education at convent schools in the United States, where teachers and students remembered her as a quiet, studious and devoutly Catholic girl.

She studied at Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia and Notre Dame Convent School in Manhattan, a small institution on West 79th Street (now called Notre Dame School), where she was a member of the class of 1949.

In 1953, she graduated from the College of Mount St Vincent in the Riverdale section of the Bronx with a major in French and a minor in mathematics.

She enrolled in law school in Manila, where she met her future husband, Benigno Aquino, a promising young journalist with a future in politics clearly ahead of him. She left the law behind and married him in 1954, and the couple had four daughters and a son.

Besides her son, she is survived by her daughters, Maria Elena Aquino-Cruz, Aurora Corazon Aquino-Abellada, Victoria Elisa Aquino-Dee and Kristina Bernadette Aquino-Yap.

NEW YORK TIMES